Sep 11 How Markos Moulitsas Taught Me To Call Them The Tea Party

Editor's note: Hi everyone, please welcome Adept2u, the newest addition to our fantastic contributor team. For many of you who came here from Daily Kos, adept2u is not a stranger. After the recent punishing and banning spree that Markos, the owner of Daily Kos went on that from everything I heard disproportionately affected people of color, women and President Obama's supporters, adept2u reached out to me and decided to make his new blog home here. - Deaniac83
HELLO, THE PEOPLES VIEW. I AM ADEPT2U.

You know it had been my intention to not really discuss the place I learned to love to blog: The Daily Kos. It is no secret I was part of the great 2011 purge of Black contributors there that also caught up my fellow blogger and really good friend at The People’s View ThisisMyTime. The last I heard over 30% of the Black participants of the Daily Kos were either disciplined or banned outright. I’m a salesperson by trade and I know that one doesn’t routinely talk about organizations you consider your competition. However over the last few days something that was so easy for me I could produce as many as 3 recommended posts a day for Mr. Moulitsas has become difficult, my muse is pissed. She and I have a very nice relationship normally. I don’t try and constrict her and she flows, so as the words are flowing pretty easily I have to apologize acknowledge her and let her out.

I suppose I might have also been actually concerned about the ability to return to that place. However, I’ve been told in order to do that, and I have been invited, I would have to request hat in hand re-instatement from Markos, so going back is not really an option because before I'd do that I would first lie in the gutter and suck off goats for a quarter.

"If you accuse someone of being racist just because they criticize Obama? Zap! If you actually say something that is even borderline racist? Zap! If you advocate for third party? Zap! This is a Democratic site. Advocating primaries is okay. Advocating third party is not. If I see ratings pack behavior or messed up uprates or hides, I won't zap, but I'll pull ratings abilities. Hell, depending on my mood at that moment, I may zap anyway. My dev team is putting together cool reports that identify patterns, so my job will get easier, and I won't be shy in exercising them.I can't begin to care who started what."

Please excuse the lack of a link. It will be my policy to never link to that site. They say the greatest lie the Devil ever told was that he did not exist, and the most pernicious lie that The Republican Party has been able to tell, and one that apparently has no party or ideology, but instead has a basic structure in superiority which has had 350 years of domination in our society is that this:

Equals this

As this will be one of the few times I personally defend myself in public, as Markos has already judged me without having actually conversed with me, let me declare my innocence of even the gross outline of the charges above. He also described those he banned as dicks, but I'll not stoop to defend myself against such an accusation.

I learned long ago before the internet was invented that calling people racist in a country that elects people to the Senate who have said the only thing wrong with the Ku Klux Klan is that they smoke pot is a very losing proposition. It is normally my inclination to discuss issues like that with people of good will in terms of the privileges we all operate under. I actually believe I had 2 or so recommended and highly thought of posts on his site discussing the subject. However what Markos apparently believes and has been communicated to me before by other management of that site is that “progressives” the people who inhabit his website do not have racial animosity.

Interestingly, one of the last conversations I had on that site in the post that supposedly sealed my fate had been with a gentleman was who felt all Black supporters of the President were Uncle Toms. If I were to say that kind of thing was rare I would have to lie to you, it happened all the time. Despite years of complaints the only answer I ever got from the moderation of that place was basically deal with it.

Daily Kos allowed and incubated a dedicated group of people to routinely troll and attack the voice of any person who announced they both supported the President and were Black. Another of my diaries which was “recommended” called “Why Adept2u will no longer participate on this site politically” outlined and explained the exact MO supplied links and was again trolled by the dedicated group. However yet again the response from management was deal with it yourself.

Allen West of all people said something a few weeks ago that literally made me shake in my boots. He described a meme where he was Harriet Tubman leading the slaves away from a plantation society. Now if he were to have used that meme against a site like the Daily Kos and or politicians who use it rather than Maxine Waters, he would have a very dangerous weapon, because it is true.

The leaders of Progressive space do not appear to be able to respect the words of Black people or accept their leadership, intelligence or even their honesty. After banning me the owner of the above website sent me an e-mail calling me a liar, again without ever having bothered to have a conversation with me. Ironically he later also asked me for a list of who I might think was a racist to assist in his purge. For those from the Kos reading this shaking in fear their Daddy (he described his participants as his children who he would discipline similarly with both innocent and guilty getting punished, or as their future psychiatrist says to his wife "honey go get that mink coat") I did not assist the HUAC, I was born with integrity which I have since nurtured.

Never was a link provided where I called anyone a racist on his site even for calling me an Uncle Tom for being a defender of Barack Obama's, or for saying things like my concern for racial equality in this country is just a schtick, and the legitimate aspirations of Black people and respect for Black people is off the rails. Those demands have nothing to do with Barack Obama, but they just don't listen to us, they throw us out instead.

So how did Markos Moulitsas get you to never refer to the Tea Party as Teabaggers again you ask? In the three years I've spent in “progressive” space as a contributor I have seen examples of racism and words and memes openly expressed on that site so vile as to make Lester Maddox blush. I have been hounded, attacked persecuted and vilified as badly as any poor sharecropper family with the night riders at the door. Why even today I’m sure the dedicated band that collected my scalp is giggling with glee. They don’t feel they have a stitch of racial animosity in their bones, well you know what? Neither does the Tea Party. From my perspective both groups, liberal far left and conservative far right, probably have about the same percentage of participants who actually are troglodyte racist as does America, and the so called leadership of the 97% White netroots shows the same myopia and self assured ignorance that was the hallmark of what I used to call the teabagger. I used to cast them that disrespect because I thought they were a thoroughly racist organization, and that the other side was on my side. Markos Moulitsas taught me something different.